...on the edge of this corner of southwestern North Dakota, and on the edge as a mom and a pastor...

March 2010

03/31/2010

It is Holy Week. Extra bulletins, extra sermons, extra extra. In the midst of that, dying eggs with kids and trying unsuccessfully to hide the boys' gifts from the Easter Bunny, who dropped them off early. (I have no idea how I'm going to hide Christmas presents next year if I can't even hide a single Easter present from that little monkey named Thomas.)

Today I finished up Maundy Thursday's sermon and the eight short messages to follow the eight Protestant Stations of the Cross. Extra extra. Piled on my desk while sermons came together were these books: The Bible (well, duh), NIB Commentary for Luke and John, Treasures Old and New by Gail Ramshaw, Messy Spirituality by Mike Yaconelli, Wishful Thinking by Fred Buechner, Irrational Season by Madelaine L'Engle, and a great Christian Century article by Barbara Brown Taylor.

From all of those words emerged a few more. More words to remind us of the holiness, not only of these days, but of all the days God gives us. More words to expose us to the God who exposed his grace and mercy in an unsuspecting and horrific place. More words about this Jesus who takes us with him from the cross to the tomb to the brightness of Easter morning.

03/30/2010

Thomas threw a tantrum at home tonight halfway through the family viewing of "Charlotte's Web". He wanted to watch "Beauty and the Beast" and had had quite enough of Wilbur and his friends, thank you very much. When I convinced him to go upstairs and get ready for bed, he disappeared. I found him inside the cedar chest, hiding out. He totally reminded me of Randy on "The Christmas Story" when he hid under the kitchen sink. "Daddy's gonna kill Ralphie!"

"Is this somewhere you'd like to go when you get mad?" I asked him. His eyes lit up. "Yeah!" It was like a book we've been reading about a girl named Sophie who also knew a thing or two about throwing tantrums. She would run out of the house and climb a special tree and calm down before coming home. Thomas loves that book, maybe because it gives language to how he feels when he gets very angry.

03/27/2010

to the Emergency Room! Two-year old Sam was the patient. Four stitches and three suckers later, he is as good as new. He fell into a drawer at my mom's and cut his lip in a couple of spots. It broke my poor mom's heart and I'm sure that was more painful than the stitching. He was the bravest kid in the world and hardly cried. Meanwhile, I turned my head to keep from fainting!

It certainly won't be the last time we, as parents, will have to hand over his care to someone else, like a doctor, knowing the only thing we can really say, hopefully with some conviction, is, "It's okay." But I guess that's the bigger picture of parenting, handing over our illusion of control because we cannot administrate all the details of our kids lives. Instead, we get to trust that the Creator of these incredible little creatures knows what He's up to, even when I don't. (Which, honestly, is just about all of the time!)

03/26/2010

So, yesterday Thomas and I went to lunch with my parents. We ventured over to a restaurant in which we'd never eaten. (It's an exciting adventure in a smaller town to go somewhere new!) There we were, walking to a table and it dawned on Thomas this was NOT McDonalds. "No me like this place." It isn't a fancy place, but a toy does not accompany the meal.

We had a great Mexican buffet - food was yummy. My dad was having some dessert. It looked like a cake with lots of cream cheese frosting. "Can I have a bite," I droolingly asked. "Sure," he agreed to share. But I'd have been better off imagining what it tasted like. "That tastes weird," I said, wrinkling my nose.

After about five minutes, he looked at me and said, "Maybe that was sour cream for the tacos." Yes, if you guessed it, just as he thought he was adding cream cheese to his dessert, the sour cream made itself at home in his cake.

"Didn't it taste funny to you?" "Hmph, I haven't tasted anything since that cold I had 4 years ago." Really, that must have been some landmark cold. I hope that never happens to me, or my Cream Cheese Bars will no longer be yummy.

03/22/2010

Our kids are complete opposites. Maybe that's why the fight all the time? Who knows. Thomas is a night owl, a picky eater, a car fanatic, and a dare devil.

It looks like he's destined to be one of those crazy snowboarders who made me close my eyes watching the Olympics. (Hopefully he won't discover that sport until he's about 45.)

Sam, on the other hand, is a morning person, a voracious eater, a sports fanatic, and timid. Doesn't get excited about snow or dirt or anything too extreme.

That is how Sam prefers to play in the snow. "Carry me, someone...anyone? Thanks, Dad."

A timid brother and a reckless brother, opposites who often rub each other the wrong way. But once in a while, science is disproven and the two opposites seem to accept their differences and call at least a temporary truce.

On Saturday night, Marcus and I found the two opposites cozied up in Sam's bed. It was an unplanned sleepover. I'm sure they were both doing their best to avoid going to sleep and this seemed like a good option. But there the opposites laid, fast asleep.

However, at 4:00 a.m. when Sam woke up for a few minutes, he was less than pleased when he looked over and remembered Thomas was sleeping in his bed. "Go away, Tom! Go away, Tom!" Luckily, the sleeping bear did not awake, and Sam was content cozying up to mom in our bed. All was well.

03/20/2010

The snow cave. Only within the last few weeks has the weather been gracious enough for little boys to play outside. Marcus spent a lot of time shoveling tunnels in one of the snow piles in addition to this cave. Thomas and his friend, Max, decided the cave is not liveable unless it can be properly heated. They ventured behind the shed in the backyard where Marcus has tucked firewood for a hypothetical firepit he has plans for in the backyard someday. Marcus loves making hypothetical plans for things and collecting pieces to make the plans happen before it's really possible for the plans to happen anyway...but it gives him something to do.

This heated fort reminded me of Huck Finn. I never really understood the truthfulness of that story until our boys have gotten a little bigger. I think Thomas is a Huck Finn character, always coming up with a new idea. "Me know what!" he often exclaims.

It means I never know just what I'll stumble upon in our backyard. Maybe one of Thomas's projects, or maybe one of his dad's.

03/19/2010

It is a new day. Working with sick and sometimes grieving people, I am constantly aware of the gift of a new day. A precious gift, a world of possibilities, whatever you'd like to call it when you wake up to see a new morning. Maybe it's like looking down on a steep slide, ready to set you in motion and liven things up. It's not necessarily the safest looking slide, I know! But it's a great one because Thomas is on it.

I think my kids help me to realize the gift of each new day. They are excited and excitable creatures. Grocery shopping is exciting, taking a bath is exciting, shoveling snow is exciting. They are God's contagious joy and grace packaged neatly into a person.

I know it is a new day, too, because one of my college friends died a few months ago and it was an experience everyone has at one time or another. It was several months ago, but I still think of Sadie Pearson and her two boys, who were 7 and 7 months when she died suddenly. You take stock of what you have and who you are and become truly grateful to wake up to the blessing of a new day.

03/17/2010

Sometimes a single word can put a person in place. The word "mom" does it to me everytime. "Me wuv woo, mom." "Get this, mom." And even, "Go away, mom," has a special place in my heart. (Well, maybe not.) It is a defining word that shifts a person's focus for all time. What matters changes. How time is spent changes. The availability of sleep is always contigent on someone else (an unwelcomed change!). And in the midst of the messines of all of those things, the beckoning of "mom", whether in a whisper or a desperate scream while trying to escape from a brother, it is a word that calls to mind who God is doing His best to shape me to be, despite my inabilities and impatience! A singular word, shifting my focus and my world, pulling me out of my other absorptions to look into the eyes of a four-year old's world and a two-year old's world and enjoy my stay there.

03/16/2010

Dad and me set two traps for leprechauns: one using a baking sheet and the other with my sled. My mom said they are sneaky little creatures who sometimes sneak into homes and make big, BIG, messes. I only like messes when I make them, not some creepy, gold-hunting leprechaun. My dad said we could put Jack outside to keep watch for leprechauns outside, but my mom said he would jump the fence and run away. (Jack, not the leprechaun.) So we set two traps inside and I promised my mom I would keep an eye out for the leprechaun while she watches tv with my dad. (Little does she know, I'm just looking for an excuse to stay up later.) She said sometimes leprechauns make breakfasts turn green. I wouldn't mind. We had green eggs and ham last week and school and I thought they were yummy. (Yummy only because my favorite cook at school made them. I sure wouldn't have eaten them if my mom had made them at home, no way!) Anyway, if that sneaky leprechaun turns my breakfast green tomorrow, that's okay by me.

03/14/2010

Consuming some caffeine from my Sherwood Wildcats coffee cup. I grew up a Wildcat, with my first day of kindergarten and high school graduation in the same building. I found this photo on the school's website. The two-story portion is the "old school" and the one-story the "addition"; gym is tucked behind the trees. I remember my kindergarten graduation day because the principal, Mr. Miller, shook each of our hands and gave us "diplomas". He pulled a fast one on me and wouldn't let go of my hand right away. Years later, he would be my basketball coach, persevering through one crappy year of losses to the next. But we had fun. It's funny to think of how much time was spent in that building, for anyone who attended a small school with K-12 in one building. The transition into junior high and then senior high was almost unnoticeable. In that building, I threw up on my way to the girl's bathroom on my first day of third grade after too many spins on the merry ground. I drooled endlessly whenever I found out "pigs in the blanket" were on the lunch menu. (Who doesn't love hot dogs tucked into bread?) I spent hours and hours trying to conquer freethrows and right-handed lay-ups. When it was too cold to run outside for track practice, we ran up and down the halls and bounded up stairs. We learned Spanish by watching Praire Public interactively. We had some absolutely great and passionate teachers, including a speech teacher who opened a world of possibilities we otherwise wouldn't have known was there and a math teacher who translated the strange language of math carefully and well (even though one of his favorite jokes was this: "What did the acorn say one day?" "Gee, I'm a tree" [geometry].)

The elementary school continues and high school students commute to a neighboring town. It would be a devastating thing to be Sherwood without the Wildcats, but for now, the town is as much Wildcat as Sherwood. Either way, I'll always have my mug to take me back to those days in that building. (Except that first day of third grade. I think I'll just forget about that day!)